Free The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton

open and she couldn’t rescue Mum. Couldn’t stop them putting her into a dark box and nailing it shut.
    Darkness was death and grief. But she’d hidden her fear from everyone, suffered her night terrors alone.
    And then one night, ten months after her mother had died, she’d pulled up her bedroom blind and looked out of her window at the dark, confronting her demons, determined to face down her fear and had seen stars, like thousands of tiny celestial nightlights.
    Through the rest of her childhood the stars had comforted her, not only for their lights in the darkness but because as she looked at them she could imagine herself far away, as if the pain of grief was soldered into their flat and street and all the places she’d ever been with her mother, or seen on TV with her even, and that if she could only imagine herself far enough away grief couldn’t follow her there.
    Her comfort from the stars had matured into an intellectual fascination and they had become more not less astonishing as she’d studied them.
    This road was eerie, an endless strip of ice through the dark, but it hadn’t been nearly as perilous as she’d feared.
    She felt Ruby move closer to her and she put her arm around her. Her determination to find Matt wasn’t driven solely out of her love for him but out of her love for Ruby too. She couldn’t bear for Ruby to suffer the appalling bereavement of losing a parent; the terrible violence of that grief.
    She remembered putting on Matt’s wedding ring at the police office, and knowing that he had to be alive, not only because of her love for him, but because of Ruby sitting next door.
    The road is made of ice and we’re driving on it! Cross-my-heart true! Our headlights show it all white with snow and mucky bits sticking on it. Around our headlights it’s dark and it’s like driving into a ghost train tunnel and never seeing the end.
    Mr Azizi said in winter they pour gazillions of gallons of water onto the old gravelly road and then it freezes. He said ice is the only thing that won’t break with big trucks driving on it, because ice is very, very tough. I think he wanted to make me feel safe but there was something in his face that meant he thinks this isn’t a good thing. He told me about the ice before we left Fairbanks, when I could still read his lips.
    Dad still hasn’t emailed back. But it’s really hard for him to check his emails. His satellite terminal is a lot more tricky to use than Mr Azizi’s because you can carry it around.
    Mum and I are coming out here at Christmas, which is only four weeks away, and Dad and I are going are going to write a blog together – aweekinalaskablog.com – about all the animals and birds we see. Dad got me a special cover for my laptop so it will work in the cold and I’ve just put it on because I think we should start our blog as soon as we’re all together.
    Adeeb checked his mirror. For the last fifteen miles or so, he’d seen blue headlights in the dark behind them, like two azure damselfish. HID lights were rare on the Dalton. The damselfish truck seemed to be following him, speeding up when he did, slowing when he did. He’d had a rookie follow him a couple of times, tailing him so he’d learn what to do, and so Adeeb would be there in case of any accident, but there was no rookie following him today. Nor could it be a friend, keeping mutually watchful eyes on one another. He had a reputation for keeping himself to himself, a reputation he felt had been created for him rather than earned. Marked as a loner he’d felt acutely alone on his trips north.
    In a few minutes they were coming to the first steep incline and his hands gripped hold of the steering wheel in anticipation, as if he’d be holding on to it rather than using it to steer. He dreaded the hazardous driving ahead and feared the ice.
    Before his friend Saaib’s accident, he had thought that ice, like glass, was delicate, the very fact of its transparency making it not